Vikki Campion: Lobbyists’ access to politicians beyond a joke

The most lucrative mine in Australia is not in the regions, it’s in the middle of Canberra at Parliament House and hundreds of lobbyists are taking a share of the riches, writes Vikki Campion.

The most lucrative mine in Australia is the taxpayer mine in Parliament House — and there are hundreds of lobbyists lining up to take a share of the riches. All you need to work this mine is an orange pass, and you can pop down any shaft to any minister’s office or go to visit any of the unsuspecting backbenchers. 

Lobbyists see members and ministers not as agents of change but as walking ATMs to fund, underwrite, and subsidise; while they themselves are on the good coin, cushioned to the obscene cost of living.

They have never put muscle to dirt but mine for taxpayer subsidies, conveniently ignoring the fact their climate posturing is driving people into poverty and instead convincing members about how funding their pet project will ensure Labor reaches net zero. This week – the last sitting before Budget – there appeared a deluge in a sub-sect of the orange-lanyard-crew, these ones bearing “climate” somewhere on their business card.

No matter how much forest and grazing land they will cement for industrial wind turbines, they griped about the lack of free Tesla charging in the parliament precinct’s carpark.

This week, they struck it rich.

These types of lobbyists ensured the wealthy got subsidies for brand-new Teslas, while nickel and lithium exports plunged as the US and Europe reached an EV market ceiling.

Australia’s most lucrative mine – Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

They talk about how cheap renewables are, wantonly ignorant of the power bill rises that are stretching the household budgets of mums who skip meals to keep their kids full.

New staffers are shocked when climate change lobbyists show up at their desks without warning.

The lobbyists sometimes believe they are entitled to mine where they like and have access to every office – deemed suitable by one unnamed sponsor.

They have spent decades conjuring false narratives that wind is green – which is why Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, in question time this week, quoted executives of the highest carbon emitters, AGL and Rio Tinto, are against nuclear power, even as countries showed an unstoppable appetite for our uranium to create some of the cheapest power in the world. Wouldn’t Rio, which is destroying the native habitats in far north Queensland and northern NSW to construct wind factories that they claim will help power smelters in Gladstone and Tomago, be nervous about being associated with widespread destruction?

In those dark parliamentary shafts, these orange pass holders have contrived a mechanism to make more money from the taxpayer than they could from creating a product.

By Thursday, the deluge of climate change lobbyists running around the building with pre-budget submissions made sense.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Mr Bowen were dusting off the taxpayers’ $15bn wallet that had sat untouched since the election.

They gave the wealthy a $1bn cheque to make solar panels in a Labor seat which, thanks to the appeal of its local Labor member Dan Repacholi, will be safe next election.

It’s easy to play big spender at the flash restaurant when holding someone else’s credit card.

Instead of pouring billions of taxes into more renewables, isn’t it time we considered a state-owned corporation, such as Sydney Water, owned by the taxpayer, answerable only to the taxpayer, for energy?

Shouldn’t we learn that selling power to private companies is a bad idea and that critical services should be in the hands of the people, not the orange lanyard holders on a select list? The Queensland Labor government makes more than a billion dollars from its energy assets, which are in turn mining electricity users bank accounts, allowing it to prop up the Treasury.

If LNP Leader David Crisafulli wants to make a difference when he inevitably wins that state’s election in October, he should vow to disconnect Queensland from the National Energy Market and make Queensland coal-fired power only for Queenslanders.

This would force the rest of us to understand what intermittent energy really means as we subsidise billionaires and foreign nations.

Wind and solar are the hills you coast down, and baseload power is the fuel station that fills the tank.

Once upon a time, mines gave uneducated blue-collar workers a chance to be comfortable by working in a pit. Taxpayer mining for renewable subsidies in the halls of Parliament House just makes the super-rich even wealthier.

The battler could only dream of that orange lanyard key, to mine for far more apt causes.

REGIONAL AUSSIES’ 000 CONNECTION LOST AS GREENS DELIVER BLOW

If you ever needed any proof of the Greens’ hatred of regional Australia, look no further than the voting record of a Senate inquiry into the 3G shutdown, which will leave country callers unable to ring police, fire or ambulance for help.

The impending shutdown of 3G, which Telstra will switch off from June 30 this year, means more than 700,000 4G phones will no longer be able to connect to the triple zero service. In our experience, the “upgrade” of towers already means dangerous country roads, which once had one bar of 3G, now suffer zero bars of 5G, while telcos tell us we are not worse off.

When One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts proposed an inquiry to investigate how the 3G network closure would impact regional access to 000, as well as regional health-compromised and elderly Australians who use medical alert devices on the 3G network and farms and regional industry whose equipment relies on 3G, it was met with Greens opposition.

The billionaire picks on both sides of the political spectrum – Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party Senator Ralph Babet and Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate-200 funded Senator David Pocock – supported it, but the Greens, once again, showed their lack of concern for regional Australians.

Former Green Lydia Thorpe saw the injustice of it, as did former Liberal David Van, unfairly ousted LNP Senator Gerard Rennick, and senior Labor hands Senator Glenn Sterle and Anthony Chisholm.

Regional health outcomes are worse than the city, they are more exposed to natural disasters, and their roads are longer, more isolated and dangerous, yet only the 11 Greens would deny them the right to call for help when they need it.